ON LANGUAGE

ON LANGUAGE; Vamping Till Ready

BY WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: May 3, 1987

It ALL BEGAN WITH AN innocent parenthetical remark. A couple of months ago, in a piece about the language of self-involvement, I quoted a girlfriend of Woody Allen as having described the actor as ''very much of a womanizer, very self-involved.'' Then this afterthought: ''(If anyone knows the noun for the feminine counterpart to womanizer, send it in).''

Evidently a great many men and women have been brooding about this for years. Suggestions began coming in at a brisk trickle. Punsters always get in the act - male-factor, man-ipulator and man-iac are typical - but serious linguists have had their say as well.

''I would like to suggest the neopaleologism gumanizer,'' writes Dr. Nancy A. Porter, one of the editors of the Dictionary of Old English being compiled at the Center for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto. ''I have a vested interest in reviving Old English words that have not survived into Modern English,'' she confesses, ''and would welcome a compound built on Old English guma, guman, 'man.' ''

That's a nice neopaleologism. (Which is a word not to be looked up, but to be figured out: neologism means ''newly coined word''; paleo- is the Greek-derived prefix for ''ancient.'' By infixing paleo- in the middle of neologism, Dr. Porter has made use of a satisfying coinage for ''new ancient word.'') In turning to Old English for the feminine counterpart to womanizer, we avoid the obvious word-building based on the Latin homo, hominis -identifying man as distinct from beast; as opposed to vir, man as distinct from woman - which would give us hominizer. That is unacceptable because it sounds like a girl having an affair with a barbershop quartet.

I began to build a nice, respectable file on this subject, when suddenly the word at issue became a streamer headline the width of the tabloid page in The New York Post. ''Straight from the Hart'' was the lead-in line, then the big black block letters: ''Gary: 'I'm No Womanizer.' '' A tiny subhead summed up the story: ''Dem blasts rivals over sex life rumors.''

Did Presidential candidate Gary Hart really say those words? Of course not, no more than President Gerald R. Ford said ''drop dead'' to New York City, although that was what The Daily News wrote in its damaging headline in 1975: ''Ford to City: Drop Dead.'' That is a manufactured quote, a nefarious journalistic device that puts in people's mouths what the headline writer thinks they should have said pithily. (First rule of denials: never use a colorful word, because it legitimizes the charge, viz. ''I am not a wimp'' or ''I am not a crook.'' Deny only hard-to-remember charges, as in ''I am not an insider-informed arbitrageur engaged in market manipulation.'') What Mr. Hart did say, after Washington Post reporter Lois Romano informed him that other campaigns were passing along rumors that the former Senator was a ''womanizer'' and asked him frankly how he planned to deal with that, was that candidates who try to spread such rumors are ''not going to win that way, because you don't get to the top by tearing someone else down.'' That was a sensible, even gracious reply to the sort of question that causes less experienced candidates to strike poses of rectitude and make strangled noises of outraged virtue.

But the word in the question, escalated by The New York Post headline, certainly placed the need for a feminine equivalent of womanizer center-stage and enlivened this column's correspondence.

First, the meaning of the male word: a womanizer is a man who seeks frivolous and frequent relations with a variety of women. Although the verb womanize originated in 1590 to mean ''make feminine, emasculate,'' that sense has atrophied; in 1893, Farmer and Henley's slang dictionary equated the word womanize with the merry go wenching. The first Oxford English Dictionary citation for womanizer in its modern sense was by John Galsworthy in ''The White Monkey,'' the 1924 installment of his Forsyte novels.

Now the term is always pejorative, replacing the mock-heroic Lothario (after the rake in a 1703 play) or Casanova, suggesting the disapproval of promiscuity expressed in the slang make-out artist or operator. The essence of the word's disapprobation is in casualness and insincerity; it stops short, however, of lecher, one who is interested only in sex, and is far from satyr, one whose interest in sex is uncontrollable.

Now to the counterpart: a female satyr is a nympho, the clipped form of nymphomaniac, and a female lecher is a lecher; that last word, from the Germanic word for ''lick,'' is ungendered, and in current use is often clipped to lech, pronounced ''letch.'' The noun has formed a verb: ''Did you see that slut lech after that mere womanizer?''

Slut, perhaps derived from the Low German for ''mud puddle,'' is gaining popularity; after substituting for whore in genteel publications, it has maintained its vigor despite the wider acceptance of the word it euphemized. However, these words - along with harlot and strumpet -are too strongly contemptuous to be suitable equivalents of womanizer; something less commercial and more callous is called for.

Seductress picked up a few votes, as did temptress, but they have a connotation of old-fashioned wickedness; the word sought must treat liaisons as too casual and cool for all-out temptation. Vamp, a pre-1920's slang term for a woman who would drag a man down to her level of delicious depravity, got some play despite its etymology from vampire. David Galef of New York City submitted the innocent and obvious flirt, but admits that it ''doesn't include the idea of consummation.''

The most frequently submitted suggestion by far is man-eater. ''Whether the reference is culinary (South Seas cannibal style) or to sharks, deponent knoweth not,'' writes R. J. F. Knutson of Rockville Centre, N.Y. Adds reporter Stuart D. Bykofsky of The Philadelphia Daily News, ''The feminine equivalent of lady-killer would be man-eater, as recently repopularized in the Hall and Oates song.''

Few dictionaries are up to date on this sense of the word. But the superb Thorndike-Barnhart World Book Dictionary has included for a decade this figurative meaning: ''a woman who is very aggressive toward men.'' And it cites this usage in Time magazine: ''He is half-heartedly fighting off the advances of a man-eater named Margaret.''

In current usage, then, we have to say that the feminine equivalent of womanizer is man-eater, though the fe-male form seems deadlier than the male. But I would like to put in a pitch for a fine old word derived from the Greek philo-, ''loving,'' and andr-, ''man'': a philanderer has long been ''a lover without serious intentions.'' We have applied it exclusively to men, for no reason; women can philander, too, and it has a more respectful ring than flirt or slut. Better than finding a gender-counterpart is coming up with a term that is sex-free. When a woman next becomes a candidate for President, she can say, ''I am no philanderer,'' without fear of sexism or, for that matter, of manufactured quotations in headlines.